Sunday, November 26, 2017

Some Interesting Counter-Questions and Answers—Part II

Continuing with our listing of
some interesting questions that are asked us from time to time and our counter-questions
and responses: Comment Received #4: “What makes you think that the term “land which
was northward” did not just apply to the lands north of Zarahemla,
including the land which you have written about that is not named?” Our Counter-Question: “Why do you think that Mormon did not bother
to mention those in between lands, i.e., the land not mentioned and the Land of
Bountiful, Desolation, etc.? Had he not done this before?”

Mormon tells us of a land between the Land of Bountiful and the Land of
Zarahemla (3 Nephi 3:3), but does not name it

Response: When Mormon was
carried by his father from the Land Northward to the Land of Zarahemla, the
Land of Bountiful and the land in between are also not mentioned (Mormon 1:6). It
sounds a lot like that was simply the way Mormon wrote, i.e., from start to end
destination. If you read Mormon’s descriptions of lands, when he is
concentrating on beginning and end destinations, he rarely if ever describes
the lands or areas in between unless there is a reason—and certainly, there
would have been reasons important to describe where those 5400 men and their
wives and children came from, where they traveled to, and why they were
immigrating—all of which Mormon skips over. He also doesn’t mention anything
more about location of the wars that broke out by the Waters of Sidon in the
borders of Zarahemla (Mormon 1:10) and then spread all over the Land Southward
until finally Mormon is forced to accede all of the Land Southward in a treaty
(Mormon 2:27-29), yet he skips over all those areas and lands with hardly a
reference.Comment Received #5: “Why didn’t Mormon say “a land,” instead of
“the land.” As you know, “the” is more definitive than “a.” Our Counter-Question: “What is the actual meaning of “the land” as
Mormon used it?” Response: In English, “the” is
used before nouns, which is a definite article, which means they are specific
or understood…“the land,” is a specific land, not just any land in general; but
it is also used rhetorically before a noun in the singular number, meaning not
several lands, or even two lands, but one land. On the other hand “a” is an
indefinite article that modifies a noun but not specifically.

That is, “a cat” can mean “any
cat,” whereas “the cat” means a specific cat. Thus, “the land which was
northward” means a specific land and not just any land” whereas “a land which
was northward” would mean “any land to the north.” What this tells us is that
Mormon knew all the land in the Land of Promise and knew it very well and
responded to it as “the” land in almost every case. However, it also tell us that
Mormon knew of a land which was away to the north, disconnected to the Land of
Promise, where immigrants went and were never heard from again, but that the
land was known to exist, probably from explorers among the Nephites who had
sailed there, saw what it was like, and returned to talk about it—a fact Mormon
failed to abridge into the record, probably because he was constrained by the
spirit since the Lord does not like to introduce outside matters of no
significance to the scriptural purpose (as in not telling Abraham of other
worlds, other than that they exist). Of course, this last paragraph
is supposition since there is no scripture or verse regarding it. In addition, when Mormon says a
ship did not return, “And we suppose that they were drowned in
the depths of the sea” (Alma 63:8), there is no reason to believe that the ship
sank. All Mormon knew was that it did not return, and he knew no more about it
than the ship that went toward a destination he did not know (Alma 63:8). All
that this tells us is that neither ship returned to Hagoth’s shipyards or were
heard from again, which ought to suggest that they had no contact with the
distant colony in a “land which was northward.” Comment Received #6:
“If there is another land northward, why
does the Book of Mormon only speak of one area to the north, and that is the land
northward (Jaredite lands)?” Our Counter-Question:
“Why do we not know about other worlds of
which the Lord schooled Abraham? Why are we limited in our knowledge to just
this world?” Response: If we knew
about other lands, other areas where Hagoth’s voyagers went, such as the ship
that they didn’t know where it went (Alma 63:8), which in modern times we are
pretty certain that ship went to Polynesia and settled those islands. To know of
other worlds would be distracting to our mission to work out our salvation and
exaltation on this world. There may be other reasons, but evidently, as in the
case of the Nephite lands, the Lord is more interested in our knowing about the
Nephites and what befell them than those that left there and went elsewhere,
any more than we’ve been told who settled other areas of the Western Hemisphere
or to wherever the Lord has led other branches of the House of Israel, such as
the ten tribes. The question we should
be asking ourselves is if Lehi landed in Andean South America, then who settled
Mesoamerica? And if Lehi landed in Mesoamerica, who settled Andean South
America? Since one area is north of the other, and Hagoth’s ships of immigrants
“took their course northward” (Alma
63:6) from “the narrow neck of land”
(Alma 63:5), then it should suggest to us that Lehi landed to the south and
Hagoth’s immigrants settled to the north. As should be
understood, the Land Northward (Jaredite lands) is mentioned by Mormon in 30
instances. The “Land which was northward” that is not a relative or substitute
for a later described land, is mentioned only once with no connection to the
Jaredite Lands or the term Land Northward. Thus, there is no scriptural
reference to tie that land “which was northward” to the Jaredite lands or the
Land Northward. Comment Received #7: “What was the purpose of the Nephites that
went north and found the ruins in the land northward other than to introduce
the Jaredite lands and provide the record of those people? The way you refer to
them all the time, you must think there is a hidden message in that situation
that is lost on me.” Our Counter-Question: “When did the Nephites begin moving into the
Land Northward that we know of as the Jaredite lands?” Response: First of all, it is
important to keep the dates and time frames of events clear in our mind when
reading the Nephite record in order to receive the greatest insight into those
events. From the scriptural record we find that the first time we know of the
Nephites possibly learning about the Land Northward was when Coriantumr
wandered into the Mulekite camp in Zarahemla. What he was able to convey about
his people and where they were and their size and scope of their civilization
is not recorded and from all we can gather in Omni, the Mulekites knew nothing
of this man and likely as not, nothing of the civilization northward that had
been wiped out. When Mosiah arrived, he was shown a stone on which Coriantumr
recorded a brief history of his people that Mosiah interpreted (Omni 1:20-22). It also appears that there was
little interest in the history of Coriantumr, or perhaps there wasn’t enough on
the stone to incite more interest. In any event, when Limhi’s 43-man expedition
went northward looking for Zarahemla and became losst, winding up in the Land Northward where
they encountered the bones, war equipment, and numerous buildings of every kind,
they thought it was Zarahemla and that the Nephites there had been wiped out
(Mosiah 7:14). King Limhi desired Ammon to
translate Ether’s record for he did not know who those people were (Mosiah
8:12) and considered their origin a “great mystery” (Mosiah 8:19). Thus, as
late as 121 B.C., the Nephites did not know anything about the Land Northward,
or the Jaredites who had occupied it. Around 30 years later, in 92 B.C. Mosiah
finished translating Ether’s records which “gave
an account of the people who were destroyed, from the time that they were
destroyed back to the building of the great tower, at the time the Lord
confounded the language of the people and they were scattered abroad upon the
face of all the earth, yea, and even from that time back until the creation of
Adam. Now this account did cause the people of Mosiah to mourn exceedingly, yea,
they were filled with sorrow; nevertheless it gave them much knowledge, in the
which they did rejoice” (Mosiah 28:17-18).(See the next post, ”Some
Interesting Counter-Questions and Answers—Part III,” in which we are listing
some questions that are asked us from time to time and our counter
questions and their answers, and for more of those answers—and continuing on
with this idea as to when the Land Northward was first occupied)